“Another Happy Day,” a new indie comedy about a first-time mother’s post-partum depression is hilarious and acted to perfection. It begins streaming Tuesday, October 1.
Chicago resident Joanna (Lauren Lapkus) has had her first child at age 35. While her husband Lucien (Jean Eli) delights in the science of good mothering, depriving Johanna of coffee, alcohol and cigarettes, Joanna is going crazy. Sleep-deprived with large red circles around her eyes (a fact her husband and friends don’t seem to notice), left at home for hours with no company, unable to accept the fact that her graphic designer free-lance job is over (she does a George Costanza and tries to return as if nothing happened), unable to get her mother to relocate and help her, she reaches out to a distant and neurotic aunt, Miriam (Marilyn Dodds Frank), for company and support with surprising results.
Johanna is not sure if she made the right choice to have a child. “I’m not really a ‘mom,’” she says, “I just have a baby, you know?” She carries the tot in an X-shaped wrap that makes it difficult for others to see it. The baby doesn’t love her, she corrects her husband, it only “needs” her. Her former employer (Carrie Coon) and friends shower the baby with compliments that only make Joanna jealous. She has fantasies about her breasts ballooning and other maternal nightmares.
Her aunt is a reclusive, childless and widowed actor who cruelly dismisses Joanna at first and smokes in front of the baby. She works very hard to win her over, helping her read lines for an upcoming audition, even throwing her a surprise “elder shower” that only infuriates the set-in-her-ways aging thespian. The comic and touching cross-generational friendship that grows between them is the core of this must-see debut by Nora Fifer, who drew upon her own post-partum depression while writing the screenplay.
While Fifer’s script and direction are top-notch what really sets this film apart from most indie comedies is the stellar acting. Both Lauren Lapkus and Marilyn Dodds Frank deliver rich, funny, engaging performances and veteran actor Frank deserves an Oscar (or at least an Independent Spirit) nomination for her beautifully nuanced depiction of Miriam.